Eyesore of the Month

Aug 2004

Behold the model for Frank Gehry's
Museum of Tolerance now under construction in Jeruselum. Financed
by Americans, the museum makes an interesting case in its sheer
physical form: the Post-modern must not just be tolerated, it has
to be suffered. The citizens of Jeruselum will now have to suffer
a building that looks like a pile of floor sweepings from a machine
shop. What's more, unlike buildings employing traditional materials
and modes of assembly, this one will not be repairable over time.
The tendentious spirit behind the museum
is strange and curious, too. Does everything have to be tolerated?
What about the intolerable? Is there a social contract or some calculus
of behavior that determines these things? Or is the museum only
an extension of the childish American kindergarten gestalt of our
time which holds that all value judgments are inadmissable?